Missing
by Bunnylass
Summary: One-shot, songfic request for 'oh.luk.its kassy'. Missing Scene from Twilight. After Jesse goes to the basilica to stop Paul travelling back in time, it’s not long before the gravity and implications of Paul succeeding start to make itself known to him...


_**Disclaimer – **_The Mediator belongs to Meg Cabot. And this song-fic idea belongs to '**_oh luk its kassy_**'. The song belongs to Evanescence.

_**Rating - **_T

_**Summary – **_One-shot. Songfic request by '**_oh luk its kassy_**'. Missing Scene to Twilight. After Jesse goes to the basilica in search of Paul to stop him travelling back in time, it's not long before the gravity of the situation starts to make itself known to him. Of the implications that come with Paul possibly succeeding . . .

_**A/N – **_So, '**_oh look its kassy_**' has a request on her profile to do a one-shot revolving around this song and Jesse when he goes back to the basilica. She thought the lyrics would fit in well and I was quick to agree. Plus, I love the song and it was a challenge. So here you go, hun! I hope you enjoy it, it's all yours. :) Reviews are love! x

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_**Missing**_

_**Please, please forgive me. But I won't be home again. Maybe someday you'll look up, and barely conscious, you'll say to no one; "Isn't something missing?"**_

I could not dismiss the look of fear in Susannah's eyes, swimming in my mind as I re-appeared in the basilica at the Mission. My thoughts were split and separated to thinking of Susannah waiting behind in her bedroom, hoping, expecting me to find Slater and stop him. The rest focused on the boy trying to play the hand of God, and finally at long last have the heart of Susannah without interference from me. Something he has been determinedly, viciously trying to gain since the first day he met her, I should presume. He has made a considerable effort to do just that. But until now, I have countered it with everything I can. I had thought I had finally succeeded; that I had stopped his assault for Susannah at last.

How could I have been so wrong and not seen that he was planning something more?

I had let down my guard and believed I was safe. That _Susannah_ was safe from him. When all along, _she_ has been the one trying to protect _me_. It wounds my ego and tempers my pride to know that I hadn't been paying as much attention as I should have been to him. His threats are not idle. Nor have they been over. They have been increasing pressure on Susannah more and more the past few weeks and I hadn't noticed. I _should_ have noticed. Maybe I did. She questioned me the fourth dimension, did she not? Telling me Paul had threatened he wouldn't destroy me . . . but stop me from dying in the first place . . .

The thought stopped me cold where I had been walking around the pews, looking for Paul Slater's familiar head of hair. '_How could I have just dismissed it like that_?!' I silently berated myself. If I had listened to Susannah's worries instead of dismissed them as a school-boy's jealous crush, I would not have been here, now, searching through the basilica for something I had brushed aside as unimportant. Because _I_ was with Susannah, nothing else mattered. I should have recognized he wouldn't have given up so easily. I had tried to punch the leering look out of him before. I have been in denial to think it was nothing more than jealously. But that alone can be deadly.

It was thought enough to encourage me to move quicker, _look harder_. I strained my ears and broadened my senses to try and hear Slater moving about. But my efforts were met with nothing. Just a silence that chilled me to the very bone; turning my blood to ice. I haven't felt the cold for a hundred and fifty years. But feeling the shivering awareness settle over me like I was being held under a river of ice, was more worrisome and terrifying that any other.

Because along with it came the re-call of what I said to Susannah, only minutes before . . . '_You and I will never meet_.'

I had stopped before the large stained-glassed window, the colours shone down on the marble floor in a way that made the flaws and scars set in the stone, move and look alive with the secrets of the night. Withering and moving around my booted feet. '_Slater isn't here_,' I quietly thought to myself with the cold detachment that spoke of the inner conflict and fear waging on inside me. _'I'm too late . . . He's already gone . . ._' Raising my head to look up at the pictures blurring in the window high above me, I felt my arms grow heavy with the weight and implication of what that meant. What would soon happen, between Susannah and me?

"_She'll never remember me_ . . ."

_**You won't cry for my absence, I know. You forgot me long ago. Am I that unimportant? Am I so insignificant? Isn't something missing? Isn't someone missing me?**_

My whisper held the force of a hundred gongs, thrumming around the high walls and ceiling of the basilica, intensified by the wooden rafters and making me stagger back from the light of the coloured shapes and pictures swirling into a haze on the floor. I didn't stop until I was once again standing in the dark, a thousand different emotions hitting me with the force of a sledgehammer to my chest again and again, slowly causing my shoulders to sink and pull me down until I was leaning heavily on the back of a pew I hadn't realized I fell against. My stomach twisted with acid and sickness, burning through my body with each new suffocating press of fear that came with each new thought.

"_I'll never remember, Susannah . . ._"

I slumped into the seat without physically feeling it. All I could concentrate on was the will not to let the pain invade me, or the thoughts cripple me. Just as Susannah will live her life, never meeting me, so will I, hundred and fifty years into the past. I will have my life back. I won't have to come face to face with Felix Diego, with no chance of surviving his surprise attack. I will be able to cancel my engagement to Maria. I will have the chance to find a love and have a family of my own. My sisters, mother, father, will never worry and wonder of what happened to me. Never have to live with the rumor and ridicule that I left them to join the Gold Rush. A hundred and fifty years of negative truth will have been erased . . .

And with it, any memories I have of Susannah.

I know . . . I _know_ I will still love her, even though I will have no recollection of Susannah. _Somehow_, I will know that there is to be someone out there for me. Someone I was supposed to meet, but not in my lifetime. Not in _that_ one. How will I be able to live my life knowing there is someone waiting for me? I'll spend the rest of my years searching and wondering for that person who has a piece of me, without knowing why. There will always be a part of me unfulfilled because it will never have the chance to experience what it feels to _truly_love. Never love the way that Susannah and I are _supposed_ to. I know that. I _know_ my destiny was to meet Susannah, even if that was a destiny where I was meant to love her as a ghost.

My real life would be led half-living. Everything else will be meaningless to me . . .

I grieved for my family when I first died. I was angry for what they had to go through because they never knew the truth. I was mad that I hadn't said something sooner and tried to break off the engagement before I did. I'd wished I could have gone back and re-done it. Many times I prayed in the dead of the night to have the chance to go back and do it right. Change it a different way. But as time had gone on, that grief had dissipated. My family, although with grief still heavy in their hearts, had moved on never-the-less. I was as at peace with my death as I could have been. I didn't know, not until I met Susannah, just _why_ I was still connected to the plane of the living.

But when it became clear that I was in love with Susannah, that she has my heart completely and irrevocably - then I knew the life I had been living before was the one I had spent as a ghost. Not the one with Susannah. She had never made me feel more _alive_. Shown me that it was bigger than me just being murdered for disgracing Maria's and my family. It was something -

_Deeper_, than I knew.

_**Even though I'm the sacrifice; you won't try for me, not now. Though I'd die to know you love me; I'm all alone. Isn't someone missing me?**_

It wasn't until I heard the crack of my fingers, did I realize I was gripping the back of the wooden pew in my hands so tightly; it had almost splintered the wood. I released them reflexively, looking down at my long brown fingers, the backs of my hands scarred from injuries I had gathered over the long years I had worked beside my father on our ranch. Fingers that had glided through Susannah's hair without abandon or fear of being pushed away by the guilt. Hands that have traced across her soft skin and felt her reaction to my touch. Knuckles that have beaten Paul Slater in defence of the woman I love. A beating I had hoped, _thought_, would have made him realize what he was doing was un-welcome.

The same hands that will never be able to hold Susannah again and touch her with the fragility she shows only to me.

I made my decision then. I didn't spare a glance around the basilica; I chose to close my eyes and conjure the face of Susannah in my mind, minus the fear that had been shimmering in the depths of her eyes before I left her and willed myself to appear to her without hiding. The pain coiling in my body and mind was pushed as far back as I could bear. I straightened up before I re-opened my eyes, recognizing the plush of her carpet beneath my feet, the hint of perfume in the air and the scent that can only be described as Susannah, comforting me like a healing balm. But when I opened my eyes, half expecting to see Susannah sitting on her bed or the window seat - she wasn't there.

I spun around to look out the window, crouching low to see if she was lying on the roof. But all I saw was the shadows of the tree branches, moving across the pine-needle strewn bed. Stepping further into her room, I called out to her hoarsely. "Susannah?!" I was hoping she would step out of her bathroom from my call. But as soon as I realized there was no light escaping from beneath the door, I knew my call was for nothing. Frantic and in the hope that she might still be in the house, unwilling to let the thought growing from my fears make itself known, I appeared downstairs, looking in the kitchen; the den; the living room and even the backyard for her.

It was all for nothing. Susannah was gone and I knew just _where_.

Running a hand through my hair roughly, I went back to her room; collapsing back on the window seat, defeated and numb. The prospect of Slater having not really gone back to my past, but come here to get Susannah had entered my mind for a second. But I didn't follow the thought because I already knew it to be pointless. The fear in Susannah's eyes was very real. Her stuttered speech around her sobbing was as heart-breaking as the day she stood before me in the shadowland; when she stood beside me at my grave. She knew without a doubt that Slater was making his threat very real. His determination has always been apparent. This time warranted no difference. He had gone back in time . . .

And Susannah had followed him.

My gaze settled on the bed, where not long before, Susannah and I had been kissing. I had, had her in my arms. Just where I wanted her now. I had returned hoping that I could do so again. Hold her and wait to find out if Paul had succeeded or not. To envelope the last bit of time I may have with her, and selfishly keep it for myself. But even that had been taken away, because Susannah was out there, intent on doing the right thing. I should have realized before I left that she wouldn't wait. That she would abhor my warning that it was too dangerous. From the point of view of Slater and the risks to her health with doing such a perilous thing.

But she is the stubborn woman I love. One so filled with compassion, I knew she wouldn't go back to stop Slater from allowing me to live; like she no doubt had gone with the intention of doing. Susannah will never rob me of the chance of having my life back - Even if that means never knowing, or loving me again. She will believe that losing a piece of herself, is sacrifice enough for allowing me to have the chance to live again, just the way I was 'supposed' to. I know because - because I would have done the same thing. I would have rather allowed Susannah to live a full healthy life - than one in limbo, no matter how powerful or strong my love for her is.

Susannah is the Mediator - It's her _Fate_ to help lost souls. Just like it was my Destiny, to have died . . .

_**Please, please forgive me. But I won't be home again. I know what you do to yourself. I breathe deep and cry out, "Isn't something missing? Isn't someone missing me?"**_

Through all our trails together - for all the will I used to try and not fall in love with Susannah, I had soon believed it had to have been for _something_.

The pain I felt when I found out she had gone into the arms of Slater had felt like a sword across my heart. I couldn't blame her for seeking solace and comfort in the arms of another, when I couldn't be the one to give it to her. She was in need of everything; I hadn't been able to offer. I had stood in the shadowland with the irreversible fear that Susannah had died for me. Had sacrificed herself, just to come and retrieve me from the existent that held no peace to me. It went beyond a friendship and I had been so overwhelmed that she had done what she did; I allowed myself a time to pretend we could be together. That I could express to her through actions, just what she means to me.

At the time, I was guilt-ridden for opening a Pandora's Box I could not close. But now I know, if I hadn't have done, Susannah would never have sought me out to tell me she didn't regret our kiss. She showed me at last, albeit wearily, just how much she cared about me in return. But we had to go through the harsh truths and painful notions of never having the chance to be together, before we finally reached that point. Once I pushed the denial away and embraced the full reality of just being in love with Susannah, I knew we had gone through them for a reason. Every day I thought about what our future together held. I questioned whether being with Susannah and openly loving her was a good idea. And every-time I dismissed them.

Up until now.

There is no way of being able to accept that Slater's going back in time is a good thing, when such a literal life-altering dilemma hangs in the balance of his success or not. As much as I tried not to accept it, I already felt the distance between Susannah and myself that spans further, deeper than the current a hundred and fifty years physically and emotionally. I could find no positive in what they were doing. The only thing I could feel, was the regret, shame and fear of what is to become of Susannah's life now. What irreversible changes will there be wrought on her life, with such a mass of emotion being taken away and never replaced?

Susannah will always be here, living her life as it is now . . . But colder, closed-off and harsher. She won't care about herself, because she won't have someone to show her _how_. When I first met Susannah and witnessed her methods of helping spirits, I blanched. Not because of the way she treated the spirit so much. But because of the way she treated _herself_. She was already on a path of self-destruction, without fully realizing she was. She baited and taunted, confident she could take care of herself; but she couldn't. I dread the thought of where Susannah would be now, without my intervention or help.

Where she will be if she does help Slater and prevent me from dying.

Slater doesn't care about Susannah. He'll carry on allowing her to walk the path of danger, without blinking an eyelid at it. He doesn't see what I have been able to glimpse from the beginning. The woman inside Susannah, who needs taking care of, loving unconditionally, held with the safety and assurance of protection I have always been able to give her. Without the aid of someone caring enough about Susannah, she will be a danger unto herself. Just like me, she will always have that question, that wonder of missing something. Missing something that was supposed to be hers. Not finding it while still helping spirits, will turn that missing piece of her bitter and dark. It will twist and taint her.

Susannah will be nothing but a husk of the woman she is now. But for her dreams . . .

_**And if I bleed, I'll bleed, knowing you don't care. And if I sleep just to dream of you, I'll wake without you there. Isn't something missing? Isn't something...**_

Susannah's room seemed to blacken and shrink in around me with the dark thoughts, making the icy coldness wrapping around me like a blanket, seize and en-case my heart. Her room I have found to be a comfort and reprieve since she came here was no longer filling me with the warmth of our memories. I couldn't bear to spare a look, without Susannah to be there to fill it. I had no idea how much time had passed since Susannah first told me of Slater's intentions. Nor how long my thoughts had rebelled against me and doubled the pain moving throughout my entire body. But I knew I could no longer sit on a window seat I declare as my own and allow myself to be destroyed.

I reappeared in the basilica and back in the coloured light of the stained glass window a moment later. My feet carried me without weight to the seat of the first pew. I could no longer keep myself up-right and slouched forward to bury my head in my hands, closing my eyes and accepting the darkness of the pain and renewed grief. What I would have given to have had Susannah seated beside me, her sarcastic words to hide her concern; her small hand running through my hair soothingly. Her whispered murmur of my name as she curled up against me. To have a break from the infliction hitting harder and faster than before. I could have wished for a lot of things; but Susannah was the one I wanted the most.

I should have wanted to go back to the time when I knew Susannah loved me as much as I do her, without the threat of an adolescent boy and the fear of life between us.

But I found I just couldn't muster the strength of wanting such a thing, in a place of such worship. It was too late for prayers, though I wanted to utter them.

In my pocket, I still held the handkerchief of Maria's. Folded neatly and there for more purpose of need than want. I had brought something of Maria's with me through a century and a half. Would I have anything of Susannah's to remember her by, when the future has been re-written and my life has been restored? The answer was already clear . . . No I wouldn't. No cloth garment with a lingering scent clinging to it. No piece of jewellery belonging to a character that holds more sentimental value than price. No locks of hair that will make me look around for the woman who holds the same colour, texture or comfort. Nothing but for the phantom memories of a life that once was.

Will I dream of Susannah? Wake during the night, saturated in sweat with the image of woman with glittering green eyes dancing just out of reach. Will my heart be heavy with contentment and fulfilment from dreaming of her? I can imagine my days stretched out long and hard as I work beside my father and wonder about the woman from a different life, talking like I have never heard a lady speak. Dress in clothes I will repulse and question indignantly; but respect all the same. I can picture Susannah haunting my waking dreams until I can sleep and once again be reunited with my memories that will be nothing but dreams to me . . .

How will I be able to love another woman and not wish for her to have eyes as green as the darkest emeralds; hair as soft as Angel's wings and love as strong as the lull of the Moon and stars? Loneliness of a hundred and fifty years as a spirit, will be nothing compared to the loneliness of knowing there once was someone out there . . . May my sleep be the only place I will ever have Susannah after this night. In a dark void of a Fate that once was, but has been forever changed.

Just like Susannah . . .

Slowly raising my head from my hands that shook and trembled with weariness and fear, I stared straight ahead without seeing anything. Slowly, numbingly, I knew something that had been evading me since the night had begun and it became clear that for all my trying, I could very well lose Susannah forever. It was a realization that didn't make everything better; didn't make anything right. But allowed me to face the pain and waiting of what soon could be, with more readiness than I had before. Something that until the moment when the pain became too much and something inside me told me something had happened - I clung onto with clenched hands and a force of will . . .

I may lose Susannah and never know her love again . . . But at least I had it . . . For a short while . . .

_**Even though I'm the sacrifice; you won't try for me, not now. Though I die to know you love me, I'm all alone . . . Isn't something missing? Isn't someone missing me . . .?**_


End file.
